


Rendezvous Times Six

by Rachy



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Provost's Dog - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Goldenlake, Infidelity, five things plus one, no real spoilers, post Mastiff, smackdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rachy/pseuds/Rachy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beka and Rosto have five trysts and one meeting. <br/>Written for Goldenlake's 2013 SMACKDOWN, team Beka/Rosto.<br/>Post Mastiff/Mastiff spoilers as to Farmer, his character and his relationship with Beka, not for anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rendezvous Times Six

“This isn’t going to happen again.” She smoothes down her tunic with slightly shaky hands, before looking at him with icy eyes. “Ever. I mean it.”

“Whatever you say, love.” He replies wryly, and watches as she opens the door and walks down the dimmed hall.

*

“I have a fiancée. I’m betrothed.” She spits, tears in her eyes, and she slaps away the hand he offers in comfort. 

“Did I do anything that you did not want me to do?” He asks seriously, holding his hands away from her.

“Yes! You know I’m engaged, you know and you still –“ She falters, and he doesn’t know what she is thinking or what she would have said. Care for me. Love me. Want me. Have me. Feel all of those things that a better man would ignore with the knowledge that she was engaged to another.

“I still?” He prompts lowly.

“No. You did not do anything I did not want you to do.” She storms away and slams the door closed, and he does not see her at all for three weeks.

*

“Why am I like this?” She asks, regret etched in her words, and her tears slide off his shoulder and into the sheets. He rubs her shoulder in some sort of comfort.

“I don’t know, Beka.”

“I really do love him. I really do. But something, something changed, and I don’t know what or how or who.” Her face is blotchy and red, her nose running, and he offers her part of the sheet to wipe her eyes on, and she does. He hides his smile in the pillow, and she turns back to him, her face wretched. 

“It will be okay.”

“But it won’t. You’re such a looby, Rosto! He is good and he’s kind and he is different and wonderful and odd and he loves me. And I, and I am canoodling with you. Who is a rusher and a liar and a thief and a Rogue and you are a looby and I won’t choose you.” She pulls the sheet away from him, wrapping it around herself, and begins picking up her scattered clothes.

“I’m not asking you to make a choice, Beka.”

“You just said it would be okay. Okay means that I am okay with the choices I make. Okay means that I leave one of you broken hearted and the other happy and I won’t choose you so it won’t be okay.” She hurls her belt at his bed, and he winces as it strikes his arm.

“Well you’re choosing between liars. I’m an honest Rogue, an honest man as I can be with you. He’s a thief of magics who puts himself down so no one notices him and skulks in the remnants of everyone’s shadows.” He lounges back on the pillows.

“There’s nothing wrong with not being arrogant about your abilities.” She hitches the sheet closer to her body, and stares down at him.

“There is if you could do so much with them and yet you play the fool.”

“You’re not asking me to choose, Rosto.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Why?”

He hears it anyway. What if I wanted you to?

“I’d be even more of a looby if I thought we’d last the summer.”  
He gets out of bed and gathers up his own clothes, dresses and doesn’t look back, even though he knows she is still standing there, staring blankly after him. He doesn’t want to see the shadows of his words in her eyes, doesn’t want to see the pain she will fail to hide. It wasn’t that he believed it. He was a patient man when it came to Beka. But he wasn’t a looby either. 

*

The next time he sees her she is back in his bed and covered by his sheets. It’s late, but she is still awake, but they speak not a word as he undresses and slides into bed next to her, and the sheets are cold in the space between them. He reaches out and takes her hand, and she runs her hand through his hair and kisses him hard enough to bruise. There is no ring on her finger like the first time, or the second, or on a chain around her neck like the third, but he tells himself the absence means nothing and she stays in his bed until morning.

*

The fifth time it happens is in her rooms, after breakfast with their friends, and the ring is back on her finger. 

“I’m leaving him.” She breathes into his ear, and he pulls entirely away from her.

“Not for me you’re not.”  
She is taken aback, and he is a little too.

“You leave him for yourself. Because it’s what you want and you do not want him anymore. You don’t leave him to shack up with me and you don’t leave him because you want me. You leave him for you, Rebekah Cooper.”

She opens her door and pushes him out, and it takes seven months for the look on her face to not appear whenever he closes his eyes.

*

It is eight months before he sees her again. She had been at Haryse for a while, Gershom taking her on a holiday of sorts, and he thinks she might have been appointed to another district for a time too. He did not ask, and no one told.   
She’s in her Dog uniform, standing next to the entrance of the Dancing Dove, and she smiles a little when she sees him. He walks over and she gives him a fleeting embrace and a briefer peck on the cheek, and his hands still itch to hold her when she lets go.

“Hello, Rosto. It’s so good to see you again.”

He doesn’t look at her hands, or at her neck. He looks her in the eyes and they are bright and happy. His gaze never falters.

“It’s good to see you again too, love. We missed you. ”


End file.
